92 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 23, 2015
in her journal. "It's not about being tired,
it's about not believing in it anymore. If
I believed it, I could do it forever." In
October, Megan finally persuaded Grace
to leave. At the end of October, the sis-
ters started secretly moving their posses-
sions to the house of one of their high-
school teachers, who agreed to help them.
Many of Megan and Grace's young rel-
atives who left the church had slipped
away quietly, in order to avoid confront-
ing their families. But the sisters wanted
to explain to their parents the reasons
behind their decision.
As the sisters agonized over whether
to leave, they befriended an older
man in the church and his wife, even-
tually becoming allies in discontent. For
a while, they all planned to leave together.
Then the couple's marriage began to
deteriorate, and the husband told Megan
and Grace that they were going to di-
vorce. Grace became involved in a brief
romantic relationship with the man.
After the relationship ended, the wife
learned about it, and sent a letter to
Megan and Grace's parents revealing
both the relationship and the sisters'
plan to leave.
On Sunday, November 11th, the
family had just returned from church
when Megan and Grace were called
into their parents' bedroom, where
their father began to read the letter
out loud. Megan told Grace quietly
that they had to leave: "It was like the
world was exploding and I didn't want
to be around to see it." Their mother
tried to calm things down. Their par-
ents wanted to talk things over---they
seemed to think that the sisters could
be persuaded to stay---but Megan and
Grace had made up their minds. As
Grace packed, their father came into
her room and asked what she wanted
the church to do di erently. "I want
you and everyone else to leave with
me," Grace replied.Their parents were
stunned, but they didn't try to force
the sisters to stay.
As the sisters packed, their younger
brother Zach sat at the piano down-
stairs, crying and playing hymns, which
he hoped might change their mind.
Other church members stopped by to
say goodbye and to warn the sisters of
the consequences of their decision. "The
fact that I'm coming face to face with
the damage that I was doing to them
was even worse than anything else that
was happening to me," Phelps-Roper
said. Her parents told her to say good-
bye to her grandfather. She walked over
to the residence where her grandpar-
ents lived, above the church sanctuary.
When Megan told them she was leav-
ing, her grandfather looked at her grand-
mother and said, "Well, I thought we
had a jewel this time."
Megan and Grace's father drove
them to a hotel in Topeka, where he
had paid for a room, but they were too
scared to spend the night alone, so
they called the teacher who had agreed
to store their boxes. That night, they
cried themselves to sleep on couches
in his basement. Megan and Grace
returned to their house the next day
with a U-Haul truck to pick up their
remaining possessions. As they walked
away for the last time, Shirley called
after them, "You know you can always
come back."
For the next few months, the sisters
drifted.They lived in Lawrence for
a month with their cousin Libby, who
had also left the church, while Grace
finished the first semester of her soph-
omore year at Washburn. They trav-
elled to Deadwood, South Dakota, be-
cause Megan wanted to see the Black
Hills. As she drove there, she kept
imagining her car careering o the
highway---she was so afraid of God's
wrath. "We were a mess, crying all the
time," she said. Phelps-Roper was
tempted to hide in the Black Hills for-
ever, but soon decided that, after spend-
ing so many years as the public face of
Westboro, she wanted to go public with
how she'd left the church, and to start
making amends for the hurt she had
caused. In February, 2013, she wrote a
statement on the blogging platform
Medium. "Until now, our names have
been synonymous with 'God Hates
Fags,' " she wrote. "What we can do is
try to find a better way to live from
here on." She posted a link to the state-
ment on Twitter. It was her first tweet
in three months. "Hi," she wrote.Tweets
of encouragement and praise poured
in. "I expected a lot more people to be
unforgiving," she said.
When David Abitbol learned that
the sisters had left Westboro, he invited
them to speak at the next Jewlicious
festival in Long Beach. They agreed,
hoping that the experience might help
them to find their way, and to finally
understand a community that they had
vilified for so long. "It was like we were
just reaching out and grabbing on to
whatever was around," Megan said.
Abitbol said, "People, before they met
them, were, like, 'So, now they're not
batshit-crazy gay haters and we're sup-
posed to love them? Fuck that.' " He
added, "And then they heard them speak,
and there wasn't a dry eye in the house."
The sisters befriended their hosts, an
Orthodox rabbi and his family. They
went kosher-grocery shopping together,
and Megan and Grace looked after the
kids. Grace became especially close with
the family, and ended up staying for
more than a month. "They were amaz-
ing and super-kind," Phelps-Roper said.
Abitbol joked about the dramatic role
reversal: " 'Your Rabbi Is a Whore'?
Your rabbi is a host."
Megan tried to put herself in sit-
uations that challenged the intoler-
ance she had been indoctrinated with.
One evening, after speaking at a Jew-
ish festival in Montreal, she and Grace
passed a group of drag queens on the
sidewalk outside a cabaret. She felt a
surge of disgust, but when Grace asked
if they could watch the show she
agreed. "It felt illicit," she said. "Like,
oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm here."
She and Grace ended up dancing on-
stage during the intermission. Wher-
ever Megan and Grace went, they met
people who wanted to help them, de-
spite all the hurt they had caused.The
experience solidified Megan's increas-
ing conviction that no person or group
could claim a monopoly on moral
truth. Slowly, her fears about God's
judgment---the first terrifying under-
standing of her faith as a child, and
its most stubborn remnant---faded.